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A Decade of Elon Musk's Tweets, Visualized – Visual Capitalist
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Elon Musk is known for many things, but one of his most buzzworthy claims to fame is his online Twitter presence.
Because of its candid nature, Musk’s Twitter feed provides the public with a unique opportunity to catch an unfiltered look into his eccentric mind.
What can we learn from an in-depth look at Elon Musk’s Twitter feed? What subjects does he focus on the most, and how has his Twitter use changed over the past decade?
We sifted through his entire tweet history to find out.
To gain a high-level understanding of Musk’s Twitter profile, our research team sifted through his entire Twitter feed and compiled 15,000 of his tweets into a comprehensive dataset.
Why go to all the effort? Here are a few reasons why we spent months sifting through Elon Musk’s Twitter feed:
Because of the above, we thought digging into the depths of Elon Musk’s Twitter feed was a worthy pursuit. Below, we’ll get into our methodology, and how we went about analyzing the mountains of tweets.
Once we scraped a decade worth of Elon Musk tweets, we dug through the data and sorted the information to answer two main questions:
To answer the first question, we sorted Elon’s tweets into categories (based on keywords) and ranked each category based on the volume of mentions.
The results are visualized in the circle chart in the middle of the graphic, which shows Musk’s most tweeted subjects over the last decade.
To answer our second question (how has Elon’s Twitter activity changed over the years) we sorted Elon’s feed into three main topics—Tesla, SpaceX, and everything else—and showed which topics dominated his feed each year.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that the two main things Elon talks about the most are Tesla and SpaceX. He’s mentioned both companies consistently over the last decade, and as the timeline shows, Tesla and SpaceX take turns in the spotlight, depending on what’s going on for the companies at the time.
While the topics and themes of his content have remained fairly consistent, the frequency of tweets has grown over the years.
Musk now uses Twitter very consistently, tweeting at least once on all but 14 days in 2021. His follower count has growth steadily over the years too:
As the above graphic shows, his follower growth started to escalate between late 2017 and mid-2018 as Musk began to burst into the public consciousness. Why? A lot was happening both personally and professionally for the busy founder:
No matter how outlandish or shocking his comments have been, Musk’s companies continue to see success, and people have continued to show interest in keeping up with the founder’s thoughts—and dank memes—on Twitter.
In the next section below, we’ll cover some of Elon’s most iconic Twitter moments, hand-selected by our research team.
Elon Musk’s first real tweet was shared in 2010. Prior to that, someone was pretending to be him and using the Twitter handle @elonmusk to tweet random and controversial things.
Luckily, the imposter didn’t gain much traction, and the real Elon Musk cleared the air on June 4, 2010, with a tweet announcing his authentic arrival onto the platform:
Please ignore prior tweets, as that was someone pretending to be me 🙂 This is actually me.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2010
After this initial tweet, Musk didn’t tweet again until the end of 2011, though his account was still verified that year. His Twitter activity remained relatively low until 2012.
In May 2012, Musk went to Twitter to share his excitement after the Dragon spacecraft successfully returned home.
Splashdown successful!! Sending fast boat to Dragon lat/long provided by P3 tracking planes #Dragon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2012
This landing made history, as SpaceX became the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.
The engagement on this tweet highlights how much larger Musk’s audience is today. The tweet above, which is highlighting some very exciting news, only has about 350 retweets.
In late 2017, Musk started selling Boring Company merchandise, mostly as a joke. But products were selling, and Elon decided to take things one step further, and announced to Twitter that he’d release a Boring Company flamethrower if 50,000 Boring branded hats sold:
After 50k hats, we will start selling The Boring Company flamethrower
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2017
The hats did sell out, so true to his word, Musk released a limited edition flamethrower at $500 bucks apiece. All 20,000 units sold out.
In August 2018, Musk told Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private, at $420 a share.
Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
This tweet was a cheeky reference to marijuana, but it ended up costing a fortune. The SEC sued him with fraudulent charges, claiming this irresponsible tweet misled investors.
He ended up paying millions in fines, and had to step down as Tesla’s chairman as a result of the drama.
Musk hasn’t been shy about sharing his thoughts on the global pandemic. On March 6, 2020, he tweeted “the coronavirus panic is dumb.” Since then, he’s been vocal about his distrust in antigen tests, and isn’t afraid to share his frustrations around lockdowns with his followers:
FREE AMERICA NOW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2020
He’s also said that the virus isn’t that deadly and that COVID-19 related deaths were inflated because doctors were wrongfully attributing deaths to the virus instead of other causes.
In 2021, Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world. His reaction was quite understated. In response to a tweet from @teslaownersSV sharing the news, he simply said, “how strange.”
From there, he tweeted:
Back to work I go …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2021
Musk is still currently the richest person on the planet as of this article’s publication date, with a net worth of $213 billion.
Elon Musk’s foray into Bitcoin boosterism ramped up on January 29, 2021, when he added “#bitcoin” to his Twitter profile page, a move that appeared to have an impact on the price of BTC.
Days later, Musk announced that Tesla acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoin, with plans to accept it as payment.
You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021
The news caused the price of Bitcoin to jump 17% to $44,000, a record high at the time. Bitcoin remained in the spotlight through the year as the cryptocurrency continued to gather support from major financial institutions.
Just days prior, Musk also added fuel to the speculative fire surrounding the GameStop stock. By simply tweeting the word “Gamestonk” paired with a link to Reddit’s infamous r/wallstreetbets, GME’s price exploded more than 150% higher.
After facing backlash over his significant stockpile of wealth, Musk turned to Twitter to ask users if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock in order to pay taxes.
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
The majority of Twitter users voted yes, and the billionaire actually followed through and sold more than $16 billion worth of Tesla stock.
In late February, as Russia launched its offensive in Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation called the SpaceX founder out on Twitter, asking for support.
Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2022
Musk would reply within 24 hours, and soon after, Fedorov would tweet a photo of Starlink terminals arriving safely in the country.
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Automakers are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. See how car logos for these select brands have evolved over time in this graphic.
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Can you picture Ford’s blue oval, or Mercedes’ three-pointed star? These are some of the most recognizable logos in the world, thanks to a number of reasons.
For starters, automakers are some of the world’s biggest advertisers. In 2020, the automotive industry spent $33 billion on advertising in the U.S. alone.
Automakers also maintain a strong physical presence by placing their logo on every car they produce. This form of self-promotion is an automotive tradition, and because of it, car logos are designed to be eye-catching and memorable.
To learn more, we’ve illustrated the histories of six brands of interest.
Editor’s note: There are obviously many automotive brands with strong histories, but for this visualization we selected brands that we thought had the most interesting stories and graphical decisions behind their emblems. In the future, we may add more or create a follow-up post if readers express interest.
Automakers often pack hidden meanings and details into their logos.
For example, Mazda’s current logo, introduced in 1997 and updated in 2015, depicts a pair of wings that represent the brand’s desire to “drive powerful, continuous growth.” The concept of flight is believed to embody the company’s pursuit of ongoing improvement. Of course, the wings also resemble a capital “M” for Mazda, similar to Honda’s “H” logo.
An interesting design choice of the Mazda lettering is that all of the letters except “D” are in lowercase. This was done because Mazda wanted to express precision, and a lower case “d” would have protruded above the upper line of the other letters.
Another logo with deeper meaning is Mercedes-Benz’s 3-pointed star, adopted in 1909. This symbol was based off a postcard that Paul and Adolf Daimler, sons of the company founder, got from their father in which the location of their home was marked by a 3-pointed star.
Today, the three points are believed to represent the strength of Mercedes’ engines across land, sea, and air.
Over the past decade, many brands have taken their logos in a more minimalist direction. Many recently redesigned car logos are devoid of any 3D effects or color.
Audi is one of the most prominent examples of this trend. In 2016, it removed the chrome effect on its “four rings” and opted for a flat black version instead. This clean and modern emblem is better suited for digital media and appears more bold. Furthermore, the name “Audi” is no longer included at the bottom—a statement of the four rings’ strength.
BMW took a similar approach with its logo in 2020, stripping away the black outer ring and 3D effect. This minimalist and transparent logo is for “brand communication” only, meaning the logos on its cars will remain unchanged.
Finally, there’s Cadillac, which unveiled its own minimalist logo in 2021. This logo is being used to represent the brand’s full-electric future, and features a monochromatic version of the classic Cadillac Crest.
The race for EV dominance has provided automakers with the chance to update or reinvent their brands. In addition to the companies mentioned previously, Volkswagen and General Motors (GM) have also rolled out recent updates.
You may have already noticed Volkswagen’s new branding, which was updated in 2019. On trend with the rest of the industry, the company now uses a 2D logo which offers “outstanding flexibility in digital media”.
More importantly, the company’s branding is intended to feel much more colorful and natural, symbolizing a fresh start from Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel-gate scandal.
Shortly after, GM revealed a new logo as part of a campaign to promote its future electric vehicles. Unlike its minimalist competitors, GM’s new logo features a gradient of light blues that evokes “the clean skies of a zero-emissions future”.
Walmart’s presence in Mexico is dominant, with over 2,700 stores. How does their store count compare to companies in the region?
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The U.S. and Mexico have influenced each other in many ways over the course of their history, through both the exchange of culture and the cross-border trade of goods and services. One lesser-known area of overlap between the two nations? Supermarket ownership.
This graphic from Latinometrics ranks supermarket popularity in Mexico by tallying the number of locations per chain, and showing who owns those brands.
When it comes to supermarkets in Mexico, no single company comes close to matching the reach of Walmart. Also the world’s largest company by revenue, Walmart has over 2,700 stores in the country, including chains it owns such as Sam’s Club and Bodega Aurrera. The latter is both the largest supermarket within the Walmart category, and also the most popular in Mexico.
Bodega Aurrera was first established in the 1970s, two decades before Walmart entered Mexico’s market directly in 1991. The discount store now has some 2,000 locations across the country.
In fact, it’s almost safe to say that Mexico is Walmart’s second home. After the U.S., which has just over 5,000 stores, the greatest number of Walmart stores reside in Mexico. But on a per capita basis, there are more Walmart-owned stores in Mexico. Specifically, there is about one Walmart-owned store per 47,000 Mexicans, compared to 62,000 for Americans.
Source: Walmart.com, Statista (International figures, January 2022), *Japan/UK figures from January 2021
The company’s presence in Mexico is so strong that Walmart’s Mexico division trades separately on the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV) under the name Walmex. In March of 2022, Walmex had a market cap above 1.3 trillion pesos, or $64 billion.
Overall, with the thousands of stores that they operate, Walmart’s revenue in Mexico gives it a 68% market share within the country’s supermarket industry.
Other American grocery retailers to make the list include H-E-B, a San Antonio-based chain with stores in northeast Mexico, and Costco, which opened its first Mexican location in 1992 as Price Club (before the companies merged).
Sorianna, the next biggest supermarket operator, holds about 15% of the industry’s market share. It is joined by Chedraui, Casa Ley, La Comer, and Alsuper as Mexico’s biggest domestic grocery chains, with some of them also extending their reach into the Southwest United States.
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